"No challenge? Doesn't that get boring?"
"In a billion years it gets a billion times more boring," the Magician agreed.
"So the Demons play games?" Bink asked incredulously.
"What better way to pass time and recover interest in existence? Since they have no actual limitations, they accept voluntary ones. The excitement of the artificial challenge replaces the boredom of reality."
"Well, maybe," Bink said doubtfully. "But what has this to do with us?"
"The Demon X(A/N)th is paying a game penalty for failing to complete a formula-application within the round," Humfrey said. "He has to remain in inertia in isolation until released."
Bink stood still, so as not to intercept any more thoughts. "I don't see any chains to hold him. As for being alone--there are lots of creatures here."
"No chains could hold him, since he is omnipotent. He plays the game by its rules. And of course we don't count as company. Nothing in all the Land of Xanth does. We're vermin, not Demons."
"But--but--" Bink grabbed for meaning, and could not hold it. "You said this Demon was the source of magic!"
"I did indeed. The Demon X(A/N)th has been confined here over a thousand years. From his body has leaked a trace amount of magic, infusing the surrounding material. Hardly enough for him to notice--just a natural emanation of his presence, much as our own bodies give off heat."
Bink found this as fantastic as the Demon's vortex-Thoughts. "A thousand years? Leakage of magic?"
"In that time even a small leak can amount to a fair amount--at least it might seem so to vermin," the Magician assured him. "All the magic of the Land of Xanth derives from this effect--and all of it together would not make up a single letter of the Demon's formula."
"But even if all this is so--why did the brain coral try to prevent me from learning this?"
"The coral has nothing against you personally, Bink. I think it rather respects your determination. It is against anybody learning the truth. Because anyone who encounters the Demon X(A/N)th might be tempted to release him."
"How could a mere vermin--I mean, person release such an entity? You said the Demon only remains by choice."
Humfrey shook his head. "What is choice, to an omnipotent? He remains here at the dictate of the game. That is quite a different matter."
"But he only plays the game for entertainment! He can quit anytime!"
"The game is valid only so long as its rules are honored. After investing over a thousand years in this aspect of it, and being so close to success within the rules, why should he abridge it now?"
Bink shook his head. "This makes little sense to me! I would not torture myself in such fashion!" Yet a thread of doubt tugged at the corner of his mind. He was torturing himself about the nymph Jewel, honoring the human convention of his marriage to Chameleon. That, to a Demon, might seem nonsensical.
Humfrey merely looked at him, understanding some of what was passing through his mind.
"Very well," Bink said, returning to the main point. "The coral did not want me to know about the Demon, because I might release him. How could I release an all-powerful creature who does not want to be released?"
"Oh, X(A/N)th wants to be released, I am sure. It is merely necessary that protocol be followed. You could do it simply by addressing the Demon and saying 'Xanth, I free you!' Anybody can do it, except the Demon himself."
"But we don't count, on its terms! We're nothings, vermin!"
"I did not create the rules, I only interpret them, through the comprehension gleaned over centuries by the brain coral," the Magician said, spreading his hands, "Obviously our interpretation is inadequate. But I conjecture that just as we two might make a bet on whether a given mote of dust might settle nearer me or you, the Demons bet on whether vermin will say certain words on certain occasions. It does lend a certain entertaining randomness to the proceedings."
"With all that power, why doesn't Xanth cause one of us to do it, then?"
"That would be the same thing as doing it himself. It would constitute cheating. By the rules of the game, he is bound to remain without influencing any other creature on his behalf, much as we would not permit each other to blow on that mote of dust. It is not a matter of power, but of convention. The Demon knows everything that is going on here, including this conversation between us, but the moment he interferes, he forfeits the point. So he watches and waits, doing nothing."
"Except thinking," Bink said, feeling nervous about the scrutiny of the Demon. If Xanth were reading Bink's thoughts while Bink was reading Xanth's thoughts, especially in the case of that shemale memory...ouch!
"Thinking is permissible. It is another inherent function, like his colossal magic. He has not sought to influence us by his Thoughts; we have intercepted them on our own initiative. The coral, being closest to the Demon for this millennium, has intercepted more of X(A/N)th's magic and Thought than any other native creature, so understands him less imperfectly than any other vermin. Thus the brain coral has become the guardian of the Demon."
"And jealously prevents anyone else from achieving similar magic or information!" Bink exclaimed.
"No. It has been a necessary and tedious chore that the coral would gladly have given up centuries ago. The coral's dearest wish is to inhabit a mortal body, to live and love and hate and reproduce and die as we do. But it can not, lest the Demon be released. The coral has the longevity of the Demon, without his power. It is an unenviable situation."
"You mean the Demon Xanth would have been freed hundreds of years ago, but for the interference of the coral?"
"True," the Magician said.
"Of all the nerve! And the Demon tolerates this?"
"The Demon tolerates this, lest he forfeit the point."
"Well, I consider this an egregious violation of the Demon's civil rights, and I'm going to correct that right now!" Bink exclaimed with righteous wrath. But he hesitated. "What does the coral gain by keeping the Demon chained?"
"I don't know for certain, but I can conjecture," Humfrey said. "It is not for itself it does this, but to maintain the status quo. Think, Bink: what would be the consequence of the Demon's release?"
Bink thought. "I suppose he would just return to his game."
"And what of us?"
"Well, the brain coral might be in trouble. I know I would be upset if someone had balked me for centuries! But the coral must have known the risk before it meddled."
"It did. The Demon lacks human emotion. He accepts the coral's interference as part of the natural hazard of the game; he will not seek revenge. Still, there could be a consequence."
"If Xanth lacks human emotion," Bink said slowly, "what would stop him from carelessly destroying us all? It would be one dispassionate, even sensible way of ensuring that he would not be trapped here again."
"Now you are beginning to comprehend the coral's concern," Humfrey said. "Our lives may hang in the balance. Even if the Demon ignores us, and merely goes his way, there will surely be a consequence."
"I should think so," Bink agreed. "If Xanth is the source of all magic in our land--" He interrupted himself, appalled. "It could mean the end of magic! We would become--"
"Exactly. Like Mundania," Humfrey concluded. "Perhaps it would not happen right away; it might take a while for the accumulated magic of a thousand years to fade. Or the loss might be instantaneous and absolute. We just don't know. But surely there would be a disaster of greater or lesser magnitude. Now at last you understand the burden the coral has borne alone. The coral has saved our land from a fate worse than destruction."
"But maybe the Demon wouldn't go," Bink said. "Maybe he likes it here--"
"Would you care to gamble your way of life on that assumption?"
"No!"
"Do you still condemn the coral for opposing you?"
"No, I suppose I would have done the same, in its place."
"Then you will depart without freeing the Demon?"
"I'm not sure," Bink said
. "I agreed to listen to the coral's rationale; I have done so. But I must decide for myself what is right"
"There is a question, when the whole of our Land's welfare is at stake?"
"Yes. The Demon's welfare is also at stake."
"But all this is just a game to X(A/N)th. It is life to us."
"Yes," Bink agreed noncommittally. The Magician saw that argument was useless. "This is the great gamble we did not wish to take--the gamble of the outcome of an individual crisis of conscience. It rests in your hands. The future of our society."
Bink knew this was true. Nothing Humfrey or the brain coral might try could affect him before he uttered the words to free the Demon. He could ponder a second or an hour or a year, as he chose, free of duress. He did not want to make a mistake.
"Grundy," Bink said, and the golem ran up to him, not affected by the Thought vortices. "Do you wish to free the Demon Xanth?"
"I can't make decisions like that," Grundy protested. "I'm only clay and string, a creature of magic."
"Like the Demon himself," Bink said. "You're non-human, not quite alive. You might be construed as a miniature Demon. I thought you might have an insight."
Grundy paced the cave floor seriously. "My job is translation. I may not experience the emotion you do, but I have an awful clear notion of the Demon. He is like me, as a dragon is to a nickelpede. I can tell you this: he is without conscience or compassion. He plays his game rigorously by its rules, but if you free him you will have no thanks from him and no reward. In fact, that would be cheating on his part, to proffer you any advantage for your service to him, for that might influence you. But even if reward were legitimate, he wouldn't do it. He'd as soon step on you as smell you."
"He is like you," Bink repeated. "As you were before you began to change. Now you are halfway real. You care--somewhat."
"I am now an imperfect golem. Xanth is a perfect Demon. For me, humanization is a step up; for him it would be a fall from grace. He is not your kind."
"Yet I am not concerned with kind or thanks, but with justice," Bink said. "Is it right that the demon be freed?"
"By his logic, you would be an utter fool to free him."
The Good Magician, standing apart, nodded agreement.
"Jewel," Bink said.
The nymph looked up, smelling of old bones. "The Demon frightens me worse than anything," she said. "His magic--with the blink of one eye, he could click us all out of existence."
"You would not free him, then?"
"Oh, Bink--I never would." She hesitated prettily. "I know you took the potion, so this is unfair--but I'm so afraid of what that Demon might do, I'd do anything for you if only you didn't free him."
Again the Good Magician nodded. Nymphs were fairly simple, direct creatures, unfettered by complex overlays of conscience or social strategy. A real woman might feel the same way Jewel did, but she would express herself with far more subtlety, proffering a superficially convincing rationale. The nymph had named her price.
So the logical and the emotional advisers both warned against releasing the Demon X(A/N)th. Yet Bink remained uncertain. Something about this huge, super-magical, game-playing entity--
And he had it. Honor. Within the Demon's framework, the Demon was honorable. He never breached the code of the game--not in its slightest detail, though there were none of his kind present to observe, and had not been for a thousand years. Integrity beyond human capacity. Was he to be penalized for this?
"I respect you," Bink said at last to Humfrey. "And I respect the motive of the brain coral." He turned to the golem. "I think you ought to have your chance to achieve full reality." And to the nymph: "And I love you, Jewel." He paused, "But I would have respect for nothing, and love for nothing, if I did not respect and love justice. If I let personal attachments and desires prevail over my basic integrity of purpose, I would lose my claim to distinction as a moral creature. I must do what I think is right."
The others did not respond. They only looked at him.
"The problem is," Bink continued after a moment, "I'm not certain what is right. The rationale of the Demon Xanth is so complex, and the consequence of the loss of magic to our world is so great--where is right and wrong?" He paused again. "I wish I had Chester here to share his emotion and reason with me."
"You can recover the centaur," Humfrey said. "The waters of the coral lake do not kill, they preserve. He is suspended in brine, unable to escape, but alive. The coral can not release him; that brine preserves it similarly. But you, if you save the magic of our land, you can draw on the phenomenal power of this region and draw him forth."
"You offer another temptation of personal attachment," Bink said. "I can not let it influence me!" For now he realized that he had not yet won the battle against the brain coral. He had prevailed physically, but intellectually the issue remained in doubt. How could he be sure the decision he made was his own?
Then he had a bright notion. "Argue the other case, Magician! Tell me why I should free the Demon."
Startled, Humfrey demurred. "You should not free the Demon!"
"So you believe. So the coral believes. I can not tell whether that belief is really yours, or merely a function of the will of your master. So now you argue the opposite case, and I'll argue the case for leaving him chained. Maybe that way the truth will emerge."
"You are something of a demon yourself," Humfrey muttered.
"Now I submit that these friends of mine are more important than an impersonal Demon," Bink said. "I don't know what's right for X(A/N)th, but I do know that my friends deserve the best. How can I justify betraying them by freeing the Demon?"
Humfrey looked as if he had swallowed the evil eye, but he came back gamely enough. "It is not a question of betrayal, Bink. None of these creatures would ever have experienced magic, if it had not been for the presence of the Demon. Now his period of incarceration has been fulfilled, and he must be released. To do otherwise would be to betray your role in the Demon's game."
"I have no obligation to the Demon's game!" Bink retorted, getting into the feel of it. "Pure chance brought me here!"
"That is the role. That you, as a sapient creature uninfluenced by the Demon's will, come by your own initiative or accident of chance to free him. You fought against us all to achieve this point of decision, and won; are you going to throw it all away now?"
"Yes--if that is best"
"How can you presume to know what is best for an entity like X(A/N)th? Free him and let him forge his own destiny."
"At the expense of my friends, my land, and my love?"
"Justice is absolute; you can not weigh personal factors against it."
"Justice is not absolute! It depends on the situation. When there is right and wrong on both sides of the scale, the preponderance--"
"You can not weigh rights and wrongs on a scale, Bink," Humfrey said, becoming passionate in his role as Demon's Advocate. Now Bink was sure it was the Good Magician speaking, not the brain coral. The enemy had had to free Humfrey, at least to this extent, to allow him to play this game of the moment. The Magician's mind and emotion had not been erased, and that was part of what Bink had needed to know. "Right and wrong are not to be found in things or histories, and can not be properly defined in either human or Demon terms. They are merely aspects of viewpoint. The question is whether the Demon should be allowed to pursue his quest in his own fashion."
"He is pursuing it in his own fashion," Bink said. "If I don't free him, that's according to the rules of his game, too. I have no obligation!"
"The Demon's honor compels him to obey a stricture no man would tolerate," Humfrey said. "It is not surprising that your own honor is inferior to that perfect standard."
Bink felt as if he had been smashed by a forest-blasting curse. The Magician was a devastating in-fighter, even in a cause he opposed! Except that this could be the Magician's real position, that the coral was forced to allow him to argue. "My honor compels me to follow the code of my kind, im
perfect as that may be."
Humfrey spread his hands. "I can not debate that. The only real war between good and evil is within the soul of yourself--whoever you are. If you are a man, you must act as a man."
"Yes!" Bink agreed. "And my code says--" He paused, amazed and mortified. "It says I can not let a living, feeling creature suffer because of my inaction. It doesn't matter that the Demon would not free me, were our positions reversed; I am not a Demon, and shall not act like one. It only matters that a man does not stand by and allow a wrong he perceives to continue. Not when he can so readily correct it."
"Oh, Bink!" Jewel cried, smelling of myrrh. "Don't do it!"
He looked at her again, so lovely even in her apprehension, yet so fallible. Chameleon would have endorsed his decision, not because she wished to please him, but because she was a human being who believed, as he did, in doing the right thing. Yet though Jewel, like all nymphs, lacked an overriding social conscience, she was as good a person as her state permitted. "I love you, Jewel. I know this is just another thing the coral did to stop me, but--well, if I hadn't taken that potion, and if I weren't already married, it would have been awfully easy to love you anyway. I don't suppose it makes you feel any better to know that I am also risking my wife, and my unborn baby, and my parents, and all else I hold dear. But I must do what I must do."
"You utter fool!" Grundy exclaimed. "If I were real, I'd snatch up the nymph and to hell with the Demon. You'll get no reward from X(A/N)th!"
"I know," Bink said. "I'll get no thanks from anyone.
Then he addressed the huge demon face. "I free you, Xanth," he said.
Chapter 13
Magic Loss
Instantly the Demon burst loose. The seeping magic of X(A/N)th immediate environment was as nothing compared to the full magic of his release. There was a blinding effulgence, a deafening noise, and an explosion that threw Bink across the cavern. He crashed jarringly into a wall. As his senses cleared be perceived the collapse of the cavern in slow-motion sight and sound. Huge stones crunched to the floor and shattered into sand. All the world seemed to be collapsing into the space left by the Demon, This was a demise Bink had not anticipated: not willful destruction by X(A/N)th, not the tedium of loss of magic, but careless extinction in the wake of the Demon's departure. It was true: the Demon didn't care.